This was but a preliminary skirmish. Four years later came the memorable series of debates between Lincoln and Douglas, each being the nominee of his party for the United States Senate. The platform on which Lincoln stood contained two significant planks, and these furnished the key-note for the speeches called forth by the campaign. I quote them both, and I hope that my young friends will not skip them. “3. The present administration has proved recreant to the trusts committed to its hands, and by its extraordinary, corrupt, unjust, and undignified exertions, to give effect to the original intention and purpose of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, by forcing upon the people of Kansas against their will, and in defiance of their known and earnestly-expressed wishes, a constitution recognizing slavery as one of their domestic institutions, it has forfeited all claim to the support of the friends of free men, free labor, and free rights.” “5. While we deprecate all interference on the part of political organizations with the action of the Judiciary, if such action is limited to its appropriate sphere, yet we can not refrain from expressing our condemnation of the principles and tendencies of the extra judicial opinions of a majority of the Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States in the matter of Dred Scott, wherein the political heresy is put forth that the Federal Constitution extends slavery into all the Territories of the republic, and so maintains it that neither Congress nor people, through their territorial legislature, can by law abolish it. We hold that Congress possesses sovereign power over the Territories while they remain in a territorial condition, and that it is the duty of the General Government to protect the Territories from the curse of slavery, and to preserve the public domain for the occupation of free men and free labor. And we declare that no power on earth can carry and maintain slavery in the States against the will of the people and the provisions of their constitutions and laws; and we fully endorse the recent decision of the Supreme Court of our own State which declares ‘that property in persons is repugnant to the Constitution and laws of Illinois, and that all persons within its jurisdiction are supposed to be free; and that slavery, where it exists, is a municipal regulation without any extra territorial operation.’” With the other points of difference we are not concerned. Whether slavery should or should not be allowed to extend its blight over the virgin soil of the new Territories, and thus make its final extinction well-nigh impossible: that was the all-important issue, and not Illinois alone, but the country at large, was profoundly interested in the arguments of the two contestants. Which was likely to win?